The international fair held annually by the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) brings together the main producing countries, as well as packaging, equipment and roaster manufacturing companies.
During the three days of the event, a 24-square-meter stand of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association is going to offer tastings of specialty coffees from different producing regions, in addition to receiving customers and distributing promotional material. The space will be funded using capital from the Coffee Economy Defense Fund (Funcafé).
"The participation of the Coffees from Brazil stand will enable farmers and businessmen to make contact and do business directly with potential buyers, and also represents an excellent opportunity for consolidating Brazil as a specialty coffee supplier and creating a positive image of Brazilian coffees in the European market," says the director of the Coffee Department at the Ministry of Agriculture, Lucas Tadeu Ferreira.
Germany is the leading European buyer of Brazilian green coffee. In 2008, Brazil exported 5.18 million bags of the product to the country, resulting in revenues of 826.4 million reais (US$ 419.4 million).
Germans are the leading consumers of coffee among the European Union (EU) countries. Last year, 9.5 million bags were consumed in Germany, whereas the entire bloc consumed almost 40 million bags. Brazilian shipments of the product to the EU totaled to US$ 2.6 billion in 2008.
In Brazil, coffee inventories are the subject of a survey conducted by the National Food Supply Company (Conab). The survey revealed that coffee inventories maintained by the private initiative (exporters, cooperatives and manufacturers) amounts to nearly 14.7 million bags, and are distributed across 1,176 establishments. From that total, 14 million bags are of the Arabica type, and 651,000 bags are of the Conilon variety.
The private inventory is equivalent to 31.7% of the Brazilian harvest in the 2007/2008 crop, which totaled to 45.9 million bags. The bulk of production comes from the state of Minas Gerais and, therefore, the highest volume of private inventories, i.e. 10.3 million bags of Arabica and 42,000 bags of Conilon.
Insurance
Insurance group Caixa Seguros purchased, for approximately 9 million reais (US$ 4.5 million), a 76.5% stake in the Argentinean life insurance company CNP Assurances Cia de Seguros de Vida. The remaining 23.5% of shares were retained by the Credicoop bank and the Segurcoop insurance cooperative, thus maintaining a partnership established in 1995. The information was supplied by the press office of the Caixa Seguros group.
With a portfolio of more than 100,000 customers and on the market for over 13 years, CNP Assurances Argentina posts annual revenues of US$ 10.1 billion and is present in 500 bank branches.
To the Caixa Seguros group, which posted revenues of US$ 2.5 billion, the purchase has an important strategic value. Besides encouraging integration between Brazil and Argentina, the company will have a management model strengthened by last year's results, when it posted a net profit of US$ 342.5 million and return on equity more than twice as high as the market average.
Canadian Mission
The Permanent Commission on International Trade of the Canadian parliament is going to visit the cities of São Paulo and Brasília, from June 8th to 10th, 2009, to attend meetings with government officials, academicians, civil society representatives, trade associations and businessmen from both countries.
The press office of the Consulate General of Canada in São Paulo informs that the aim of the visit is to explore the ways in which Canada may improve its commercial ties with Brazil, and help Canadian companies to seize the existing economic opportunities in the country.
Brazil is regarded as a priority market by the government of Canada. The visit will also contribute to increase Canada's level of involvement in the Americas.
In the city of São Paulo, the Canadian parliament members will meet with representatives of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), members of the Canada-Brazil Chamber of Commerce (CCBC) and its renowned Arbitration Center, as well as representatives of Canadian companies that already maintain operations and business in Brazil. Also in São Paulo, the delegation will meet with members of the civil society and academia.
In Brasília, the group should meet with representatives of the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, of the Foreign Trade Promotion department of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, as well as representatives of the Brazilian Legislative Power, which comprise the Brazil-Canada Friendship Group.
Brazil is the third largest market for Canadian exports of goods in the Americas, after the United States and Mexico. In 2008, bilateral trade between the two countries totaled to approximately 10 billion Brazilian reais (US$ 5 billion).
The relations between Canada and Brazil are also strengthened by the thousands of Canadians of Brazilian origin, who contribute to the development and prosperity of both countries.
Global Leader
Brazil is the global leader in funding of clean energies. Over 90% of new investment in Latin America has taken place in the country. What is more: around 46% of energy consumed in Brazil comes from clean sources, and 90% of vehicles made in the country nowadays are flex-fueled, i.e. may run on gasoline or ethanol. The figures were culled from a survey conducted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
The survey also shows that the number of projects for investment in clean energy worldwide has quadrupled since 2004. In all, US$ 155 billion were injected into the sector in 2008, more than half the amount of funds invested in traditional energy.
The bulk of investment was made in Brazil and in China. A large share of the funds went to the field of the biofuels, wind and solar energy. In 2008, Brazil invested a record-high figure for Latin America, with US$ 10.8 billion turned to ethanol. The figure represents growth of 76% over 2007.
The Governor's Green Calculations
If the world were to use 10% of ethanol mixed into gasoline, carbon emissions would be reduced by more than 500 tons. That would be equivalent to one billion trees planted. The data were presented by the governor of the state of São Paulo, José Serra, in the second edition of the Ethanol Summit, in the state capital São Paulo.
Like Serra, other municipal, state-level and federal leaders, such as the Brazilian government's Chief of Staff, Dilma Rousseff, and the mayor of São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab, waved the green flag of environmental protection and ethanol defense at the event.
And it is not for no reason. In addition to emitting less pollutants, a matter that is present in conversations worldwide, ethanol is economically promising. The president of the São Paulo Sugarcane Agroindustry Union (Unica), Marcos Jank, says that despite the global economic situation, there is no crisis in the sector.
In spite of the ethanol price reduction, the segment remains attractive to investment. And that is noticeable from the number of ethanol plant construction projects underway – in Brazil and abroad, from Ghana to the United States. All of that ethanol should start flooding the market soon.
Shale
SIX Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company's shale industrialization business unit, headquartered in the municipality of São Mateus, state of Paraná, owns one of the world's largest shale reserves. It is the Irati Formation, which encompasses the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás.
The unit processes 7,800 tons of shale a day, which gives birth to products such as oil fuel, industrial naphtha, fuel gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), sulphur and other products that may be used in the asphalt, cement, agricultural and ceramics industries. Besides extracting and processing shale, the unit, which turned 55 years old last week, operates as an advanced research center in the field of refinement, and develops a series of projects in partnership with the Petrobras Research center (Cenpes) and universities across Brazil.
The SIX technological park is Latin America's largest and one of the world's largest in terms of pilot-plants, consisting of 15 plants created to meet the needs of the various refinement processes and biofuels.
Two wheels
Figures disclosed by the Brazilian Association of the Makers of Motorcycles, Autocycles, Scooters and Bicycles (Abraciclo) show that in May, the industry's manufacturing and exports grew by 11.1% and 13.2%, respectively, compared with the previous month.
Frozen items
From January to May this year, the ports of Paranaguá and Antonina recorded a throughput of approximately 500,000 tons of frozen products, representing growth of 37.4% over the same period of 2008, when shipments totaled to around 360,000 tons.
According to the Paranaguá customs, shipments of frozen items answered to the lion's share of exchange revenues from exports, having totaled to nearly US$ 875 million in the first four months this year. In comparison with the same period of last year, there was growth of 20.25% in the value generated by exports of frozen products. The figures for the month of May have not yet been consolidated.
Last year, out of a total of 3.2 million tons of chicken meat exported by Brazil, the state of Paraná answered to 1.1 million tons, or 35% of the total shipped. Out of 509,000 tons of pork meat exported, 16% were shipped from Paraná (85.200 tons). As for beef, out of 1.1 million tons exported in 2008, 63.800 tons were shipped from Paraná, the equivalent to 5.7% of the total shipped.
Inter-modality
The use of inter-modality in cargo transportation by companies operating at the Port of Paranaguá – or companies that participate in the logistics chain involved in the port's operations – should grow this year in comparison with 2008. According to figures supplied by the América Latina Logística (ALL) company to the Paranaguá and Antonina Ports Administration (Appa), in April, trains transported over 951,000 tons, representing growth of 32% over the same month of last year, when the volume was 719,200 tons.
On average, 28.8% of cargo inflow and outflow at the Port of Paranaguá, in the first four months of this year, were transported in wagons. Soy (899,000 tons), chaffs (595,000 tons) and containers were the main cargoes shipped on railways during that period.
In the accumulated result for the first four months, the total shipped on railways was 2.68 million tons – a similar volume to the one recorded during the same period of last year: 2.67 million tons. The trend, however, is for the figures to surpass those of 2008 by the end of the year.
Anba